


Recursive

by ExLibrisCrow



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Agoraphobia, Gen, Mental Coercion, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mind Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-28 00:00:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20957093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExLibrisCrow/pseuds/ExLibrisCrow
Summary: Statement of Ninivah Sharp, regarding a strange encounter in the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airport.A statement about giving a statement about a maze, or an empty field, or a fear.





	Recursive

**Author's Note:**

> CW all canon-typical: mind games, coercion, hungry archivist, agoraphobia, athazagoraphobia (fear of being lost or left behind).
> 
> Spoilers for S4, kind of.
> 
> Thanks to octopodian and Erin for giving me a quick beta!

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[ click ]

Statement of Ninivah Sharp, regarding a strange encounter in the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airport. Statement taken direct from subject by Basira Hussein.

Statement begins.

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.

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I don't usually talk to other travelers.

So like - my job requires a lot of travel, which I'm fine with. I'm... unattached, let's say, and pretty much available to catch a flight at a moment's notice, and the office agents are pretty good about booking my flights to suit my preference, which is as late at night as possible.

So, as I said- I don’t usually talk to other travelers, because there are generally no other travelers around to talk to.

...well, no. I mean, that's... quite true? But not the _whole_ truth. To be entirely honest, I don't like to talk to anybody if I can help it, not unless I already know them. Travelling just exacerbates that. Nobody _really_ wants to talk to anybody else in an airport anyway, and I generally just keep my head down, sit in a corner, and read while I'm waiting for my flight to board. It's not- it's not as lonely as it sounds, I promise.

And for the most part, it works. Every so often, you get the super chatty little old lady who wants to show you pictures of her grandchildren and tell you everything about where she’s going, what she's going to do when she gets there, and all the people that used to go with her every year, but that are dead now. Or the janitor that thinks you’re lonely and tries to chat you up on their way through, figuring it’s a kindness. Or- _my_ favorite- the guy traveling by himself, that plops down in the seat next to you as though the entire rest of the boarding area isn't _completely empty_, and tries to convince you to join the mile-high club while he forgets to hide the pale band of skin where his wedding ring usually sits.

And yes. I know that last one sounds like a really specific story, but trust me: if you're a woman frequently traveling alone, it quickly turns into a generality as universal as that little old lady.

But anyway, _this_ guy... he wasn't one of those.

So sometime last July, I was waiting out a layover in Atlanta, and my connecting flight wasn’t due in for another couple of hours. It was already late enough to qualify as early, and I was curled up in a corner of the boarding lounge, submerged in a paperback. I thought I was the only person there- the lounge had been empty when I had arrived, and I hadn't heard anyone else come through in well over an hour. But as I read, I gradually became aware of an unsettling feeling of being _watched_. I mean- it must have started subtly enough, but it slowly swelled in intensity until eventually I couldn't ignore it anymore. I looked up.

There was a man sitting on the other side of the boarding area, staring at me. I have no idea how long he’d been there. I hadn’t heard him arrive. It- his gaze was _so intense_\- ...it was _heavy_, almost physical, all the weight of his attention focused on _me,_ to the exclusion of anything else. I think I must have gasped, or made some other startled noise, because he suddenly blinked, and that oppressive weight was gone. He looked- he looked like he was _waking up_, like he'd been asleep with his eyes open and only now became abruptly conscious.

He flushed and looked away without saying anything and I went back to my book.

I couldn't concentrate, though. I was hyperaware of this man's presence now, like an itch I couldn't reach... I could just see him in the periphery of my vision, and I couldn't ignore him fully enough to focus. Finally I gave up on the book and - somewhat spitefully, I admit - stared at him instead.

He was thin- _gaunt_, really-, and looked like he'd had a rough time of it lately. Like he hadn't been eating, and had slept even less. I don’t think he was very much older than I am, but there was grey shot through his hair, and through the stubble that suggested he hadn’t shaved in at least a couple of days. He didn’t have any bags with him.

He looked, sitting there with his shoulders slumped and his eyes closed, like a skinny, out of work academic with too much stress and not enough relief. He didn’t look dangerous. He looked like he needed a _hug_, and a nap, and a good meal, and then another nap. Lather, rinse, repeat. Maybe he really had been asleep with his eyes open. He seemed to be asleep now. So I shrugged and went back to my book, and this time managed to re-immerse in the story.

Until about half an hour later.

Because I felt the _watching_ again.

This time, when I looked up, the man was closer, and this frightened me a little, because again, _I hadn’t heard him move_. He was sitting about four seats down the row from me, staring again.

I admit that what I did in response was probably a really stupid idea – I mean, I was for all intents and purposes alone in an airport with a guy who was behaving disconcertingly erratically; god only knows what was wrong with him or what he’d do – but I stared belligerently right back at him, determined to give him a dose of his own medicine. I was _annoyed_, and I wanted to make it very clear to him that his attention was unwanted.

Neither of us moved. Neither of us spoke. Neither of us blinked. Neither of us even _breathed_, I think, for as long as I could stand it. But I couldn’t keep it up long; I sucked in a desperate breath and tore my gaze away. It was... it was harder than it should have been.

There was a rustle of clothing as I tried to calm my racing heart, and the man settled into the seat next to me. He didn’t say anything at first. He just sat down, and folded his hands in his lap. They were... under any other circumstances, I would probably have called them elegant, even with all the scars. But right then, with sudden fear fizzing along my every nerve, they seemed grotesque—too long, too thin, the tight, glossy skin of a healed burn a little too reminiscent of certain horror movies.

“You have a story,” he finally said quietly. His voice would have been pleasant too, under other circumstances. Low, the kind of English accent that we- Americans, I mean- think of as cultured. RP, I guess it’s called? Anyway, it was not the kind of voice that should have sent my pulse screaming- at least not like this- but it did. He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, and turned his head to look at me. I couldn’t help it: I looked back. I met his gaze, and I was immediately _trapped_. I couldn’t look away if I wanted – and oh, I wanted to. It was- his eyes were dark. No, not dark. _Black_, just this... empty, endless _void_, and I couldn’t tell where his pupils ended. Maybe they didn’t.

“You have a story,” he repeated. His voice was... so soft. _So_ soft. “I’m very sorry,” he continued. “I really am. But I’m _so. Very. Hungry_.” He paused, and leaned in just a little, just enough that I could hear him when he whispered, “Tell me your story.”

And I did. I couldn’t- there was no way to avoid it. Something in that voice, in the tone of it, some huge, impossible pressure behind and underneath the words... it _dragged_ out of me the story I hadn’t told anybody since I was a little girl.

“I grew up,” I told him, “in a small town in New England. Holidays were a big deal, growing up – not just in my family, but in the whole town. Everything was celebrated as a community. Christmas parade, an Easter egg hunt in the town square; massive town-wide barbecue for Memorial Day; huge fireworks display for the 4th of July... That kind of thing. And Halloween...

“Halloween was something special.

“There’s something about autumn in New England. There’s something in the air that brings the whole region alive when the days start to shorten and the trees start to turn. Harvest season has always been more popular up north.

“My little town reveled in it. Every year at Halloween, practically the whole town gathered at the square for cider and donuts and a costume contest before dispersing to go trick-or-treating (or to hand out candy, for those who didn’t have kids to supervise). And the whole month of October was a cheerful lead-in to that night. As soon as September passed, the celebration began. A carnival rolled into town and set up out by the high school. There were pumpkin patches and neighborhood jack-o-lantern carving contests; haunted houses, hayrides, an enormous bonfire after every home football game during the month. And the corn maze.

“It’s a pretty small town, and like a lot of small towns up there, the dominant industry is agriculture. For miles and miles surrounding it, there’s nothing but farmland, and a lot of that is corn. And every year, one of the farmers volunteers to set aside part of his cropland for the harvest maze. It’s not a challenging one – it’s basically impossible NOT to get to the center of it or to find your way out again – but it’s a tradition, and it’s fun.

“We- my parents and I- went every year. I’d ride my dad’s shoulders, tall enough to see over the tops of the cornstalks, and we’d traipse through the labyrinth, happy in the waning autumn sunlight. It was _good_.

“When I was nine, I convinced my parents to let me walk the maze by myself.

“We’d been through together half a dozen times or so already that year, and I knew the pattern perfectly. I even sketched a map of it in the dirt to prove to them that I knew how to get out, and anyway there were a lot of people wandering through it who could help if I got stuck, and a couple of off duty EMTs on hand for medical emergencies if anything happened, and the farmer’s daughter Erica was helping out that day and she knew her way through it blindfolded... I had probably overthought my arguments, but they were enough to get my parents to let me have my way.

“I was _so_ proud of myself as I ran to the maze’s entrance and stepped between the tall, dry cornstalks, head held high, sneakers crunching in the dirt. I followed the path, and I ran my hands through the broad, pale-yellow leaves to either side of me while I walked. There was the first fork in the path, and I took the one on the left without hesitating, the same way we’d done every time I’d been through with my parents. Curve around, head to the left again, then double back... I didn’t hesitate.

“I could hear the other people in the maze with me at first, talking to each other, laughing, a couple of high pitched, screechy giggles as a group of high school girls were startled by somebody’s boyfriend, the crunch of more shoes than mine over dirt. I ignored it all, focused on tracing the path through the cornstalks toward the center.

“It occurred to me that I couldn’t hear voices anymore at the same moment I realized that I had come to a split in the path that I didn’t recognize.

“I stopped dead, straining to catch any sound of other people- but there were no voices to hear. Just the soft, soughing wind chasing itself through dry cornstalks, and my own too-fast heartbeat, rushing in my ears.

“I yelled. I yelled for my parents over and over again, screaming their names when ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ didn’t get any response, eventually just screaming without words when nobody answered me. My throat was raw when I finally subsided, and I was crying, and desperately afraid.

“Where had everyone gone? I couldn’t say. I hadn’t been in the maze that long, had I? It was still light out, although going by the slanted sunlight, dusk was coming on quickly, as it does in mid-autumn. And anyway, if I’d been gone too long my parents would have come looking for me... wouldn’t they?

“They wouldn’t have just... _left_ me there. Right?

“And then there was the matter of the wrong turning.

“I couldn’t have taken one. The path through the cornfield was too straightforward for that – a few cul-de-sacs branched off the main trail here and there, but it was laughably easy to get out of them and back to the right turnings. And anyway, I hadn’t found myself in any of them. I had never moved off the pathway to the center of the labyrinth.

“So how was it possible that I stood now at a fork in the path that I didn’t recognize?

“A couple of crows cawed distantly as I wiped my nose and took the left-hand path. I kept taking the leftward path anytime I came to a fork. Turning and turning, trudging over drying dirt and dying crops. I couldn’t say how long I’d been walking- the sun never moved, never dipped any further than it had already slid in the sky, but I might have been walking for days. My feet hurt and I was _so hungry_ and so thirsty and so tired, and I was on the verge of giving up when abruptly I stumbled out of the cornfield.

“...into nothing.

“The corn maze, when I had entered it, had been surrounded by gently rolling fields, with the road a grey ribbon not far away, a farmhouse on the other side of it, the barn and other outbuildings a bit beyond. There had been a line of trees on the far side of the field, dark where they grew beside the slow little oxbow river that fed the croplands that sustained my town. Other farms, further away, had been visible, their barns presiding over properties so similar to the one hosting the maze as to be nearly indistinguishable. A Girl Scout troop and a 4-H group had been set up near the entrance of the maze in friendly bake-sale competition, their booths brightly decorated.

“Now there was nothing. Nothing but the field in which I stood, stretching on and on, unbroken until its remote edges were gently folded into the soft, impenetrable fog that suffused everything with leaching grey.

“No people. No cars, no _road_; no farmhouse or barn or _farm_, just the flat field unrolling forever on every side, and in the middle of it, the tall, rustling stalks of dying corn.

“It was cold outside of the maze. The fog curled around my feet and soaked through my sneakers, eased through the fabric of my jeans and my jacket – too warm for the sunny late afternoon I’d emerged from, too light for this chilling mist that soaked it through too quickly and seemed to be reaching for my pounding heart.

“I turned, and I ran back into the maze. It meant endless wandering, I knew, but it was better than the fog.

“Eventually, too exhausted to keep going, I sat down, curled up against the stiff, brittle rows of cornstalks, and fell asleep. I don’t know how long I slept, for the same reason I didn’t know how long I had been lost, but when I eventually woke up, it was because a shadow had moved over my face.

“I sat up with a scream, and scrambled to my feet, ready to run- but I recognized the face scowling down at me, and stopped.

“‘You shouldn’t be here,’ said Erica. She crouched down in front of me. Her shadow was so long in the late autumn sunlight, stretched and strange-looking. ‘You got out into the big field, didn’t you?’

“She didn’t wait for me to answer. Just sighed in annoyance, grabbed my hand and stood up again. Her hand was very cold.

“‘Come on,’ Erica said. ‘I don’t want _kids_ here. You’re too small and you make too much noise and you don’t know how to be properly afraid.’ She started off through the maze, and I stumbled along after her, crying again. I tried to pay attention to the path she took but it didn’t take me long to lose track. There were so many turns, so many branching trails; far more than there had been when I had gone through on my dad’s shoulders what felt like a lifetime ago.

“Eventually, sound started to ease back into my awareness.

“Voices, again, after so much silence.

“Erica stopped before we reached the maze’s exit. She bent down to stare into my face, and pointed the way down the last stretch of corn-lined pathway. ‘Get out of here,’ she hissed at me. ‘Go find your parents before they get worried. And don’t come back.’

“I did everything she told me. My parents were waiting as though nothing was wrong, although they were immediately concerned when it was clear I’d been crying. I told them I’d tripped and scraped my hands a little, and they accepted this readily enough.

“I never told them about the rest.”

I stared at him while I talked. I drowned in those wide, unblinking eyes – and I don’t mean ‘drowned’ like in those idiot romance novels, but true drowning: trapped and untethered, suffocated by something vast and all-surrounding, all-pervasive, all-uncaring. The kind of drowning that fills you up and leaves you dead. There was nothing else in the world but those _eyes_ and the words as they were methodically ripped out of me by my own traitorous voice.

It was... I have never felt so exposed. It felt like something bigger than worlds poured into every corner and crevice and hidden space of my awareness and laid it all bare for its own patient scrutiny. It was an _appalling_ intimacy. But. But it... for- for a few minutes – while my story spilled out of me – the, the _fog_ that I’ve spent most of my life drifting through- it cleared away. And I felt my own bone-deep, desperate _loneliness_ for the first time since... since my story.

When my story was finished, when I regained some awareness of myself and my surroundings, I was sobbing- hunched over and hugging myself, all snot and salty tears and hiccups, and I heard the man next to me get quietly to his feet. I felt his hand on my hair – just a light touch, almost too light to register, and it felt- it-

I was _so_ upset and confused and I must have been half out of my mind, because it felt like a benediction. I heard him say “thank you,” above me and it sounded- it sounded like a _blessing,_ or a _prayer_. That same sense of endless observation blossomed through my mind, just for a moment, like he’d _invoked_ it somehow, and then drained away again when his touch vanished. I heard him walking away.

I did not watch him go.

Statement ends.

[ click ]

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to keep this aligned thematically with canon. I admit that the timing may be a smidge wibbly-wobbly, as they say, but if we accept that maaaaaybe Jon started taking live statements a little before he said he did, this slots nicely in between his chat with Gerard Keay and his return to UK.
> 
> Given the setting, it may well have been *immediately* before his return to the UK.
> 
> I leave it to the reader to decide what prompted Ninivah to go make her statement and face her fear.


End file.
